


The Common Tongue Of Your Loving Me

by LittlePageAndBird



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Darillium (Doctor Who), F/M, Fluff and Smut, Handcuffs, Post-Episode: 2015 Xmas The Husbands of River Song, Singing Towers of Darillium, Smut, Teasing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-12
Updated: 2020-05-12
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:53:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24148477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittlePageAndBird/pseuds/LittlePageAndBird
Summary: River holds his chin in her hand, tilting his gaze up to hers. “Arms above your head.”She watches him as he obeys her, lying back and curling his hands around the headboard. She lets him lie there for a moment, splayed out and compliant under her, before she opens the handcuffs and reaches up.
Relationships: The Doctor/River Song, Twelfth Doctor/River Song
Comments: 10
Kudos: 85





	The Common Tongue Of Your Loving Me

**Author's Note:**

> You, me, handcuffs. Must it always end this way? Couldn't resist. Title from Hozier's Moment's Silence.

He’s never known River to be so quiet as she has been in these first twenty-four hours on Darillium.

Before that first hesitant kiss on the balcony she’d searched his eyes to ascertain whether this was something he still wanted. He’d done everything he could to assure her, offering smiles in return to her uncertain glances, kissing her softly before the sunset, capturing her hand to hold it properly when her fingers had danced across his palm over the dinner table for the third time.

After dinner he’d parked the Tardis in a secluded spot near the Towers and she’d watched him wordlessly as he’d shut the ship down into hibernation mode. He’d been halfway through considering out loud how to fix the chameleon circuit to transform the place into something that actually resembled a house when he’d noticed the look on her face. “River, what’s wrong?”

“I don’t know what to say,” she’d whispered, tears in her eyes.

“Then don’t say anything.”

He’d kissed her then, the bruising kind that burned up between them like a short fuse when it had been too long since they last found each other. They’d fucked against the console, tumbled into their bedroom in the pitch dark, desperate and impatient. It had felt less like desire and more like need, like feeding an addiction. They’d buried their faces in each other’s skin, his teeth sinking into her shoulder, her legs tight around his waist, the whole thing messy and fast. Both of them had cried, and tried uselessly to hide it. They’d fallen asleep wordlessly, tangled in each other’s arms with half their dinner clothes still on.

This morning he’d proposed that they stay in, because he’d rather fancied the idea of being tucked away with her in their ship for a little while - it’s not as if they have anywhere to be, for once. There’s still something not quite right with her; she’s quiet, restless - and he gets it, he gets how _much_ all of this is, how fragile and raw it feels. They spend their first day on their new home planet moving around each other in the Tardis like the air is made of glass, all unsaid words and soft touches. 

The next time she feels safe enough to lean into him, he stops her. “Wait.”

River freezes abruptly, hands not falling away from him but paralyzing where they fist in his shirt. He covers them with his own, bringing the knuckles of one hand to his lips to kiss them.

“I know all of this is overwhelming for you,” he says gently. 

“I’m fine.” She sighs softly, relenting. “It hasn’t been easy, lately,” she manages, her eyes fixed on one of his shirt buttons as she toys with it. “Losing my parents; my diary filling up.”

“You’re here now. I’m here,” he reminds her quietly. “We have time, River.”

“I know. It’s just… it’s just hard to…” She swallows, and shakes her head. He doesn’t need to hear it; it’s hard to believe. He knows that’s why she’s been so passive since they got here; afraid that if she engages with any of this, it will slip right through her fingers like a dream. And he knows he hasn’t exactly given her reason to think he won’t let her down.

He’s been setting the pace - choosing the moment he told her who he really was, designing this planet for her, giving her the little time she thought he couldn’t understand. And last night he had been the one to hold her hand, to kiss her, to pin her beneath him as he’d desperately tried to show her what he could never quite say. But he’s thought about this all day and he knows now that that isn’t quite what she needs.

He’s still as rubbish with words as he’s always been - the best he could manage last night by way of attempting to tell her how he feels was a convoluted ramble about a couple of singing rocks - but he has the advantage, now, of knowing her better than he ever has. And luckily, there’s one language of hers that he knows exactly how to speak.

“Perhaps it would help,” he murmurs against her cheek when she leans into him, “If you were in control tonight?”

She turns her face until the tips of their noses touch, looking up at him searchingly. 

“I thought we could do something to help with that.” He takes hold of her hand and holds it out, palm-up, and in response to her questioning frown he digs into his pocket, pulls out a familiar pair of handcuffs and presses them into her hold. 

Her eyes light up instantly. “Really?” she asks, breath a little hitched. He’s never offered this before, not initiated it outright like this; even when his last face was old enough to be her husband and to have no doubts as to why she always carried handcuffs, it had still been part of the game to feign a struggle - to mask his delight with half-hearted protests as she pinned him down and snapped them around his wrists. Not tonight; he’s not leaving any room for her to doubt.

“Really.”

She twirls the cuffs through her fingers, pulling the chain tight between her hands, and when she kisses him again her teeth sink into his bottom lip.

She pushes him onto the edge of the bed by his shoulders, pulling his shirt out of his trousers in between kisses and popping the buttons open until she can shrug it off him. 

She holds his chin in her hand, tilting his gaze up to hers. “Arms above your head.”

She watches him as he obeys her, lying back and curling his hands around the headboard. She lets him lie there for a moment, splayed out and compliant under her, before she opens the handcuffs and reaches up. He feels the cold metal close around his wrists and she smiles triumphantly, biting her lip, as he gives them a testing pull.

She swings a leg over him to straddle his waist, hitching her dress up around her thighs, and his hands are already straining with an instinctual need to touch her. Her fingers skate over his wrists and down his arms to relax him, tracing swirling patterns in his skin as she leans in to kiss him, slow and attentive. 

“River,” he starts when she breaks away, watching her through heavy-lidded eyes. There are about a thousand things on his tongue. 

Her fingers press to his mouth before he can go any further. “No speaking unless you’re spoken to,” she instructs him, her voice low. “Understood?”

He nods, kissing her fingertips before she pulls them away. 

“Good.” She experiments, dragging her fingernails down his chest, digging them into the soft skin of his stomach just enough to sting. His muscles flex under her touch but he keeps still, meeting her eyes when she looks up at him. There’s a charge in her eyes, something electric that buzzes between them.

“Have you ever worried that I might hurt you?”

He doesn’t need to think about his response, which is probably just as well. “Never.” 

She considers his answer for a moment before shifting down his body, lowering herself with a hand planted on his thigh while the other edges one side of his trousers down ever so slightly.

“You trust me?”

She drops her mouth to his exposed hipbone, and with her gaze safely away from his face he smiles down at her fleetingly. Oh, how she loves being in control - being denied it for so much of one’s life can do that to a person - but this is about more important things to her than that, he knows. Even if she doesn’t know anything else about what she means to him, at least here she can know that she alone is entrusted with him in this state; that for her alone, he will relinquish all control of his own. 

“With my life,” he answers resolutely, in a voice raspier than he’s used to hearing it.

She lets him go; a stinging purple mark blooms on his hip in the shape of her teeth. The sight of it, of this body’s first brand by her, sends heat coiling low in his stomach, and he wriggles beneath her hold in a feeble effort to move her. He’s still fully clothed from the waist down, certainly a deliberate choice on her part - everything she does here is deliberate - but even so, the effect her mouth on him is having can’t have escaped her notice.

Her lips move lower, as still she makes no effort to remove his clothes. “Even,” she murmurs against the fabric of his trousers, her breath hot on his inner thigh. “After yesterday?”

Eyes closed, he feels her clever hand stroke across his trouser front. Definitely hasn’t escaped her notice, then. “Always.” The word is strung tight as he arches his head back. He feels her move over him and then her lips are on the hollow of his throat, seeking his attention. When he opens his eyes, hers are looking back at him.

He lifts his head off the pillow to kiss her, but she pulls back until she’s just out of reach. “Say it again.”

Her eyes are hard and unblinking as she looks deep into him. He holds her gaze unflinchingly, knowing what the weight of his words are upon her. It’s a power he swears silently never to abuse again. “ _Always_.”

Her weight settles on him a little more, and she wedges a leg between his. “Or twenty-four years,” she challenges lightly, offering him a whispery kiss when he bites back a groan at the renewed contact.

He smiles affectionately. “Same thing.”

Her face softens, eyes crinkling at the corners. Apparently satisfied, she teases her way back down his torso with her lips and fingers until she reaches the waistband of his trousers. 

She rests there with her chin on his stomach, looking up at him through her eyelashes as her thumbs run swirling circles up his thighs, nails biting just enough to let him know that he isn’t allowed to move. 

She sets to work on his belt, unfastening the buckle and sliding the end out of its loops one by one, popping open his trouser buttons and kissing the tiny, innocent patch of new skin exposed by them. His eyes never leave her; he feels drugged, hyper-aware of every move she makes on him. Time feels slower, swirling and thick. River flaunts her new mastery over it, all this new time they have - the very tips of her fingers nudge inside his waistband but stay just there, stroking lightly as she licks and bites a path from one hip to the other. He maps each point of contact in his head, trying in his dizzied state to match it against the constellations they know - she likes leaving messages for him, sometimes, on his skin. 

She slips off the end of the bed and lifts his feet into her hands one by one to remove his socks, taking such care that to watch her allows some of his frustration to ebb away. They’d had a brief taste of this last night but they hadn’t taken their time like they should have; like they could finally afford to. He reminds himself that to be wound up so tightly like this, to be taken apart slowly by her, is a privilege that their tangled, tumbling lives have rarely afforded them.

He lifts his hips off the bed for her and she eases his trousers and underwear off together, tossing them into a discarded heap on the floor with about the same level of respect that she shows all of his clothes. But she looks at him, always, like he’s worth far more than he is. 

She stands at the foot of the bed between his legs, drawing her bottom lip between her teeth as her eyes roam leisurely over him - and even though there’s barely any blood left in his head to form a trail of cohesive thought, it’s hard not to feel vulnerable. Particularly when she’s still, for no reason that he would consider justifiable, fully clothed.

The dress she wears is her old favourite, the green one that he knows from experience takes little time to remove. He swallows, licking his lips as her fingers toy with the top of the zip running down the front.

The corner of her mouth curls up at what must be a desperate look on his face, and the zip comes down. She slips the dress off her shoulders and shimmies out of it, her underwear quickly following - she’s very good at this game, but she’s still no more patient than he is.

He remembers the first time he saw her like this; how he’d marvelled at how golden her skin was, like all of time is swirling just beneath its surface. It’s no different now; if anything his fascination with her body and everything it stirs within his own - with its freckles and battle scars and bruises - has only heightened in her absence. He thinks of the myths told to him on Gallifrey, bedtime stories about powerful goddesses who held universes in their hands. He wonders how many of them were her.

She climbs over him slowly, hovering on all fours with her face above his. He drinks in the sight of her like he’s dying of thirst. She peers down at him thoughtfully, watching him watching her. “I never did let you know what I thought,” she muses.

“Of what?” he answers faintly, distracted by the contemplation of whether it’s possible to regenerate from the sight of her alone.

Her hands move to his shoulders and walk down his torso until she’s sitting on his stomach, legs either side. The feel of her naked against him steals his breath in one fell swoop. 

“This new body of yours.”

He swallows, said new body tensing under her even though her voice is all smiles. She’s so very _good_ at making him feel so transcendently formless at times like this that he’d almost forgotten. She notes the shift, fingertips skimming the outlines of his taut muscles. “Do you want me to show you what I think?”

He sighs, nostrils flaring. “Is that a rhetorical question?”

“Better be.” She smirks, dipping her head to map slow kisses down his chest. Her skin is warm and soft on his and the feel of it has that unique effect on him that she always has - a headlong collision of soothing and frustrating. Her nipples brush against his skin as she moves, and she hums low in her throat at the contact. He makes an involuntary noise that sounds far too much like begging, and forces himself to bite his tongue to stop himself breaking her rules - she’ll only prolong his suffering if he does. She’d wandered off to fight entire wars while leaving him tied up in the Tardis like this on many an occasion.

Damn her. This body, born from a thousand years of solitude, was designed to recoil at the touch of someone else - to shy away from even the smallest intimate gestures. Now River’s been given half an hour with it at her mercy and he’s certain that it’ll die if she doesn’t touch him where he desperately needs her to.

But his wife has other ideas, it seems; precisely, taking care of herself. She mouths at him everywhere above the waist that she can reach, her breath catching between kisses as she begins to move her hips against him in a rhythm that’s intensely slow. 

“My Doctor,” she breathes, her eyes soft and devoted as they find his, and he feels her hand work its way between them. “So beautiful.” She rests her forehead on his chest so his vision is obscured by a miasma of hair before he can look down to watch exactly what she’s doing to herself, but he feels it. 

Pulses thumping behind his eyelids, he wills himself to breathe and concentrates on the points of sweat and heat where they join - her breath coming in short bursts against his chest, the hand she uses to brace herself splayed possessively across his ribs, the friction against his stomach as she works her fingers.

A barely-there _please_ slips out before he can stop it and she blessedly takes pity on him, pushing herself back up to her sitting position to let him watch. She watches with him, teeth sinking into her lower lip as she lifts herself up and dips her fingers through the curls between her legs.

He half-sobs and lifts his hips uselessly, twisting his arms in their restraints. She laughs breathlessly at his squirming, merciless, wet fingers sliding up her stomach and squeezing her breast as the hand she’s been bearing on his chest moves up to fist in her hair. He watches her every movement - exactly where his hands ought to be - and as she rolls her nipple between her fingers and grinds down, hot and wet against his stomach, a strangled noise of frustration escapes him.

“Your idea,” she reminds him smugly, rocking her hips.

“River.”

She glances up at his pleading growl of her name, pupils blown wide and her chest heaving. He inclines his head up, beckoning her. 

He feels her reaction rather than witnessing it, her thighs clenching around his waist and the heat of her skin flushing as she considers his offer. His hearts almost swing around his ribs with delighted relief when she lifts herself and moves up his body. Any ideas he briefly flirts with of teasing her or holding back die a quick death in his head as she eases herself down over his face. 

He surges up to open his mouth against her and her hips stutter against him at the flat strokes of his tongue, pet names falling instantly from her mouth like curses. He feels her hands curl around his on the headboard and laces his fingers through hers in an iron grip, holding her down as he spreads her open with his tongue and thrusts inside her with deliberate, spearing strokes that leave her trembling around him. Her hips writhe in time with his movements and the way she moans his name, deep and guttural at the back of her throat, tells him she’s already close. She frees a hand to cradle the back of his head, fingers bruisingly tight in his hair, a hot rush spilling onto his tongue. He groans against her and when he sucks her most sensitive point between his lips she comes apart above him with a hoarse shout, undulating under his mouth as he works her through it. 

She’s the only thing he ever remembers tasting. He kisses every part of her he can reach when she relaxes, mouthing along her thighs and up her stomach, his lips chasing her even as she lifts herself off him and slides down lazily until they’re face to face. 

Her skin is slicked with sweat and her hair is twice its usual size. He grins up at her.

“Oh, shut up.” She kisses the taste of her from his lips slowly. His senses no longer flooded by her, he remembers to breathe for the first time in several minutes, putting his faithful respiratory bypass to rest. It always leaves him a little giddy imagining himself before a council of his people, telling them exactly how he puts their biological advantage to use. He’d be slain on the spot as a heretic and by god, would it be worth it.

River nudges his jaw with her nose until he angles his head to give her access to his neck and she sucks the skin there between her teeth, dispelling any lingering complacency in favour of renewed need. When she releases him, her smug chuckle against his ear tells him that he’s not going to have to dig out a scarf if he fancies appearing in public anytime soon. He glares at her. 

She mimics his expression with surprising ease, setting her eyebrows in furious arches and downturning her mouth. It makes him laugh aloud, just as her hand snakes between them and wraps around him without warning. His laughter trails abruptly into a choked sob and he throws his head back, eyes rolling back in in his head as her hand squeezes up, thumb swirling in maddening circles.

“Open your eyes.”

Her voice is a whisper at the shell of his ear, and it’s not a request. He forces his eyes open and holds her steady gaze, half-focused. She varies her movements, speeding up and then slowing right down in ways that leave him gasping and shivering under her as he fights to keep his eyes on her face. She studies his face for every second of it like it fascinates her, observing what each twist and stroke of her hand does to him.

His vision blackens at the edges, eyes fluttering with the effort of staying open, and when she suddenly withdraws all touch it feels like an electric shock. “No,” he pleads between one breath and the next, reeling. “River, please-”

She shushes him gently, holding a finger to her lips. He growls at her. 

“Do you torture all your husbands like this?” he bites out.

“Only you, darling.” She smirks, smoothing back the hair stuck to his forehead. 

“What an honour,” he retorts dryly. “Thought I was just terribly useful every now and then.”

“So sensitive,” she coos, her smile fading a little as she falls quiet tracing idle patterns in his chest with her fingertip. “It’s not as if I could ever describe to anyone what you are to me, Doctor,” she murmurs. “I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”

“A flowchart can help.”

She laughs softly. “I don’t mean the timelines,” she says, her voice quiet as she kisses along his collarbone.

“Then what do you mean?” he asks weakly, raising his eyebrows at the top of her head. “Having trouble describing the stars themselves?” Her sharp eyes dart up to him, and he jangles his wrists pointedly. “Not sure how you’d go about handcuffing a sunset.”

“Oh, sweetie, haven’t you heard?” She grins, lifting herself up over him. “I can make monoliths sing.”

She sinks down before he can retort, taking him inside her. He curses in languages he thought he’d forgotten, thrashing on the pillow as he’s torn between throwing his head back and watching the way her eyes flutter shut at the feel of him filling her. She watches him, always, strung tight beneath her, as she rocks her hips in dizzying figure eights - slow, deep strokes that grow more urgent when he begins to shake under her. She presses her hands to his chest and whimpers, a noise she’d never admit to making outside of this room, fingers curling against his skin.

His hips snap off the bed to meet her rolling movements and she swears loudly at the ceiling, making a noise caught between a laugh and a growl. “Hate you.”

Before he can manage his reply she drops forwards until their foreheads press together, the deeper angle wringing groans from them that mingle with messy kisses.

“Oh, I love you,” River sighs on an outward breath.

“Make your mind up.”

She fists a hand in the hair at the nape of his neck and pulls, hard. “The _first one_.”

They drop into perfect sync as they drive each other faster, their breath coming in harmonised, agonised gasps that steal the air from between them until they break. River is first, her hips stuttering wildly out of control against his, and the feel of her clenching around him as her eyes screw shut and her mouth falls open in a silent scream is enough for him to be pulled over the edge with her. 

Their bodies melt into each other, warm and sated. When her weight rolls off him, he feels like he might float.

“Fragment links!” River exclaims breathlessly.

His head lolls to the side to blink at her, dazed. “If we hotwire them, and suspend the binary coding,” she goes on between breaths, smoothing her fingers through his hair lazily, “we should be able to budge the plasmic shell and fix it no problem.” 

“Hmm?”

“The chameleon circuit.”

He frowns, puzzling it over as she props herself up on her elbows and leans over him. “I think it’s a little more complicated than-”

“It really isn’t.” He hears the buzz of her screwdriver and then a metallic click as the handcuffs fall loose. 

“Well.” River pillows her head on his chest. He stretches the ache out of his arms and wraps them snugly around her, nestling his nose in her curls. “I always liked the police box look.”

“Me too.” She’s quiet for a moment as he holds her. “Won’t you miss it?”

“What? The box?”

She lifts her head, propping her chin in her hand. He runs his hands from her waist to her shoulders and down her arms, trying to compensate for being deprived of touching her. She strokes circles in his chest, keeping her gaze fixed there. “The universe.”

He sighs softly, tucking a damp strand of hair behind her ear. “If you insist on me being the stars, wife…” He holds her head up in his hands so she can’t help but look at him. “What did you expect that makes you?”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoyed xx


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